A STRATEGIC GUIDE FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT

An Introduction to Citizen Service Technologies and 3-1-1

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Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government

Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................3
• Executive Summary

KEY DEFINITIONS ..........................................................................................................4

PART I. THE CRM AND 3-1-1 PRIMER

An Introduction to Citizen Service Technologies – CRM and 3-1-1 ......................5

• Service – It’s Our Business
• Origins of Citizen Service Technologies
• Key Definitions
• Why Use CRM and 3-1-1?
• Early Government Adopters

Four Approaches to Citizen Relationship Management ..........................................8

• Commodity: An Answer to a Specific Pain Point
• Service: A Platform Solution for Responsive Government
• Intelligence: Insight, Decision Support and Accountability
• Experience: The New Public Square for Civic Engagement

PART II. PLANNING, IMPLEMENTING AND EVOLVING CRM AND 3-1-1

Getting Started ..............................................................................................................10

• Creating the Vision
• Understanding Public-Sector Authorizing Environments
• Evaluating the Approach Strategy
• Architecture-Oriented Approach
• Mandate-Oriented Approach

Mobilization Phase ..........................................................................................................13

• Creating Teams
• Creating a Communication Plan
• Defining and Managing Scope
• Managing Scope Across Jurisdictional Lines

Implementation Phase ..................................................................................................15

• Reengineering Business Processes
• Integrating the CRM Software
• Training and Retraining Staff
• Marketing to the Public
Maintenance Support and Evaluation Phase..............................................................18
• Providing Maintenance and Support
• Evaluating Customer Satisfaction Data
• Measuring Performance Goals
• Leveraging Accountability

Critical Success Factors ................................................................................................20

Lessons Learned ..............................................................................................................21

Summary ..........................................................................................................................22

PARTICIPANTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ..........................................................................23

2
 A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Center for Digital Government, participating cities and counties, Avaya and Motorola —
underwriters on this project — undertook an examination of the public citizen relationship
management (CRM) landscape through a two-part conversation: the concept and the making
of a plan.

The Center is grateful for the participation of senior leaders from Chicago, Ill; Chattanooga,
Tenn.; Hampton, Va.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Kansas City, Mo.; Miami Dade County, Fla.; Topeka,
Kan.; New York City, N.Y.; Tampa, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; Des Moines, Iowa; Virginia Beach, Va.,
and the contributions of many others for their enthusiasm and candor in creating this strategic
planning guide for their colleagues across the country. The guide reflects the lessons learned
from their experiences. Further, the Center wishes to thank Motorola and Avaya for their
contributions to this project.

EXECUTIVE
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY SUMMARY

This Guide is written for local government officials interested in enhancing relationships with
citizens. Whether you are a chief information officer (CIO), a city manager, a public works
director, or an elected official, this Guide provides information about CRM strategies for cities
and counties.

The Guide’s structure reflects the process that smart government executives have used again
and again when embarking on a new initiative. The first half is a primer on CRM providing the
history and definition of CRM. It offers an overview of four different approaches to CRM using
the experiences of cities and counties to illustrate each approach.

The second half provides broad phases jurisdictions employ for a CRM initiative, from creating a
vision statement and obtaining executive support, to establishing project teams — developing a
Request for Proposals (RFP) and implementing the system. There are many steps along the way,
and although each jurisdiction tailors the process to best meet its needs, key phases are
identified in the guide so that local government officials can follow a path sucessfully paved by
jurisdictions that have already implemented CRM.

This Guide captures the collective knowledge of progressive cities and counties that are
sophisticated both technologically and organizationally. Their stories and experiences are
intended to help other local governments use CRM and 3-1-1 contact centers (formerly called
call centers when only applied to telephone calls) to better serve citizens.

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Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government

Key Definitions
Because citizen service systems are not a single technology, there is no single definition. Here is a summary
of the common characterizations of such systems:

CRM – Citizen Relationship Management:

a.) a policy and process of dealing with customers;

b.) a technique to gain insight into the behaviors of customers, and establishing, maintaining and optimizing long-term relationships;

c.) use of data collected through interactions to reduce risk, assure accountability for service delivery, and anticipate future
demands for service;

d.) allows all the links in the chain to have the information needed to provide services;

e.) the systems and infrastructure required to capture, analyze and share all facets of the customer’s relationship with the enterprise;

f.) a process to measure and allocate organizational resources to those activities that have the greatest return and impact;

g.) integration at multiple legacy databases with a high-performance system for the real-time retrieval of customer data from multiple,
previously separate databases; and,

h.) an integrated information system that provides consistent levels of service across channels — Web, telephone, fax, e-mail,
conventional mail, and face-to-face.

Like the private sector, public CRM installations are often supported by contact centers:

Contact Centers: CRM strategies include establishment of what is known as a contact center, which in the past was known as
the phone center where a telephony network connected people with agents via telephone. Today, the contact center uses
multiple channels of communication (phone, e-mail, Web-based systems) to capture and deliver calls and messages to the agents
who are available at single or multiple, distributed locations. The contact center is the point-of-connect for the 3-1-1 callers who
contact agents through any of those described communication channels.

Call Management Software: Contact centers use different levels of call management applications to determine how to manage
and control incoming calls. These applications include automatic call distribution, interactive voice response and universal queuing.

Automatic Call Distribution: A call center uses a voice-switching system that connects callers to an agent who handles their
calls. The automatic call distributors manage call traffic through a queuing system and routes calls to agents according to a set of rules
determined by the call center. It can also provide real-time monitoring of workloads and reports on system and agent performance.

Integrated Voice Response: This application allows callers to access the information and make the requests needed through
automated telephone recordings and prompts. Callers navigate computer databases by listening to voice prompts and making
touchtone or voice-activated responses.

Universal Queuing: This function treats all forms of citizen contact as a single stream of inquiries and requests. Universal queuing allows
for more cost-efficient systems by deferring e-mail and Web site call-back requests to agents as they become available from normal calls.

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An Introduction to Citizen Service
Technologies – CRM and 3-1-1
Service – It’s Our Business
Government was present at the creation of
the service economy. In fact, government
invented it. Service delivery is government’s
primary business. With 228 years of
experience in service delivery in the United
States, city and county governments have
become very good at it — even though his-
torically it has been done without the benefit
of data that measures the quantity and quality
of public services.
Until now.
A growing number of local jurisdictions are
transforming service delivery and their rela-
tionships with citizens by using technologies
initially developed for the private sector —
CRM and 3-1-1 systems. Instead of viewing
citizen contacts with multiple government
departments as a large volume of random
transactions, CRM and 3-1-1 technologies
provide powerful tools to:
• react to (and anticipate) patterns in service
requests;
• optimize the allocation of resources to
respond to those requests;
• bring consistency to monitoring government
performance in delivering services; and,
• ensure accountability for what gets done,
when, by whom, and at what cost.
For citizens, the results can be profound –
although they would have no reason to know
that three little letters, CRM, changed their
experience. CRM technologies run behind
the service delivery channels that touch citi-
zens – including face-to-face interactions and
those carried out through e-mail, the Web,
wireless devices, and telephone.
For government officials interested in
implementing a program, the process can be
both rewarding and challenging. CRM is
enabling technology – helping to create effi-
ciencies, more effective service delivery and
A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
expanded capacity. Yet CRM is also a disruptive
technology – refocusing service delivery
around the citizen, while strengthening the
accountability for performance. The introduction of CRM
The introduction of CRM requires important
changes in the previously discrete way requires important changes
government entities acted. The transforma-
tional power of CRM is profound and the in the previously discrete
experience of those who have implemented
public CRM comes down to this: Citizens
way government entities
love it. Elected officials love it. And operating act. The transformational
departments love it or learn to love it.
power of CRM is profound
Origins of Citizen Service
Technologies and the experience of
In thinking about CRM, it can be useful to
extract lessons from a successful technology- those who have imple-
supported relationship management system
that most of us take for granted. 9-1-1. This mented public CRM
three-digit emergency number is universally
recognizable as the single contact point for peo-
comes down to this:
ple seeking police, fire or medical assistance. Citizens love it. Elected offi-
The migration of 9-1-1 to the United States
demonstrates the promise and challenges of cials love it. And operating
good ideas and serves as a helpful reminder in
considering CRM and non-emergency 3-1-1 departments love it or
centers. The following are important points to
remember: learn to love it.
First, good ideas take time. It took
decades for the United Kingdom’s 9-9-9
emergency service, created in 1937 after a
delay in reporting a London fire resulted in
five deaths, to cross the Atlantic.
Second, good ideas can take root in
smaller communities first. The forerunner
to 9-1-1 services in cities across North America
was introduced in 1959 as a British-style 9-9-9
service in Winnipeg, Manitoba, followed by the
first 9-1-1 services in the United States in
Haleyville, Ga., a decade later.
Third, good ideas simplify the
citizen experience. In the early Winnipeg
application, then a city of 16 municipalities
(each with its own fire and police service),
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Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government

constituents were freed from the confusion
CRM systems also power a growing
of 32 separate seven-digit numbers
number of 3-1-1 citizen contact
centers. With a convenient and easy-to- with the introduction of a single three-digit
remember three-digit number to make a number.
single call to city hall for non-emergency Fourth, good ideas can succeed even
services, public CRM brings discipline, if tangled up in interoperability issues.
routine and consistency to the way service The Bell system (AT&T) and independent
agents handle calls, and they have the phone companies (USITA) set off in different
information to fulfill requests and directions before negotiating a compromise
respond in a manner that is smarter, on the three-digit emergency number.
faster and cheaper. Fifth, good ideas anticipate tomor-
WHERE IT IS WORKING: row’s needs, but imbed the best think-
Local Governments Refaced by ing of today. The numbers 9-1-1 were cho-
CRM sen in large measure because they could be
(a non-exhaustive list) dialed in the dark on a rotary phone.
• Akron, OH In a comparatively short 10 years, CRM
• Austin, TX and 3-1-1 technologies have established
• Baltimore, MD themselves as mission-critical systems.
• Birmingham, AL
• Chattanooga, TN Why use CRM and 3-1-1?
• Chicago, IL Relationships are at the heart of communi-
• Colorado Springs, CO
ties. And CRM is an investment that reflects a
• Dallas, TX
• Detroit, MI long-term commitment to making the citizen
• Houston, TX the common decision point in everything
• Indianapolis, IN government does.
• Miami-Dade, FL Governments initiating CRM have decided
• New York, NY to turn government outward to face the citi-
• Rochester, NY zen. These cities and counties understand
• Twin Falls, MT that while an individual contacting govern-
• Tucson, AZ ment may be a customer of a service, she
• Winston Salem, NC is also a citizen, a constituent and a member
of a community. And, CRM establishes a
relationship with the individual in each of
these roles.
The CRM philosophy is rooted in a singular
focus on the customer experience, which is
often described in government as citizen-cen-
tricism. The impetus behind this shift, write
authors Colin Shaw and John Ivens, “lie in the
dramatic increase in the commoditization of
products [and services]…driven by the
advent of the Internet (and) the demands of
an increasingly affluent society that craves
more and more as it develops stimuli and self
actualizes.”1
It is the quality of experience that differenti-
ates what government has done from what it
needs to do now. Shaw and Ivens say that
success in this endeavor will be found in the
words people use:
“I feel like she understood what I wanted.”
“They treated me like an individual.”
“He cared about me.”
“They did everything they could to help.”
The outcome sought extends beyond
price, features, quality, and service to include
an emotional component that adds up to the
customer experience.
CRM brings a coordinated approach to
handling events from initiation to follow
through on behalf of all the operating
agencies that stand behind it. That is a sharp
contrast to the switchboard model under
which calls are simply referred to operating
agencies. With a service orientation, the
CRM system captures the details of the
event, initiates a service request to the
responsible agency as needed through

COMMODITY SERVICE INSIGHT EXPERIENCE

Colin Shaw and John Ivens, Building Great Customer

1

Figure 1: The Continuum of Public CRM

Experiences, Palgrave MacMillan, 2002

6

common workflow management, monitors
progress in fulfilling requests, and measures
performance related to solving the problem.
Hampton, Va., officials say that CRM helped
the city “reface” government and effectively
bridge formerly siloed organizations.
The philosophy and results are seen in the
language cities use to describe their citizen-
central approach:
“One call to City Hall.”
“One call does it all.”
“Your city at work for you.”
Further, CRM enables jurisdictions to focus
on events and their location, with a view to
understanding patterns in service delivery to
ensure efficiencies across formerly discrete
government organizations and providing a
consistent experience for the citizen. The
patterns identified through CRM can be
predictive and provide important data for
planning and budgeting purposes.
Early Government Adopters
The city of Baltimore, Md., became the first
city to implement a 3-1-1 contact center in
1996, followed by Chicago the next year. The
two early adopters were able to gain insight
into high-volume service requests, such as
garbage collection, road maintenance, traffic
sign/signal maintenance, drainage/erosion
problems, and abandoned vehicles.
Both cities used CRM/3-1-1 to figure out
what counts, count it and hold people
accountable for the results. Experience has
taught them that performance measures
change over time and that “what doesn’t get
counted gets discounted.”
The bottom line: savings and new revenues
attributed to CRM in Baltimore total $13.2
million annually (in a general fund budget of
$1 billion).
Site visits to Baltimore, Chicago and other
localities with experience using these
technologies have become touchstones for
other jurisdictions as they conduct due dili-
gence in understanding CRM conceptually
and see how it works on the ground.
A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
Government executives want to understand CRM MATURITY BY INDUSTRY
what the technology can do from an
operational perspective, while their technologists High Financial Services
are eager to understand the long-term record Pharmaceuticals
on availability, reliability and security. These Retail
early experiences were instrumental in
shaping the direction taken by dozens of Medium Automotive
cities and counties that have pursued public Healthcare
Manufacturing
CRM/ 3-1-1 in states from across the country
with multiple installations: Alaska, California, Low Government
Florida, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio, North
Carolina, Maryland, New York, Source: Barton Goldberg ISM Inc, 2004
Massachusetts, Michigan, Maryland, Texas,
and Virginia.
Four Approaches to Client
Relationship Management
CRM can be configured to meet highly
tactical objectives and serve more strategic
interests, too. The possibilities stretch from
commoditization of routine transactions at
one end, to improved service delivery and
data-driven decisions in the middle, or to
providing a technological assistance to a new
generation of civic engagement at the far end.
The set of technologies grouped under
CRM are often sold as a point solution when
the more compelling case for buying them is
developing new approaches to doing the
public’s business. CRM is not a monolithic
one-size-fits-all solution. It is sufficiently flexi-
ble to adapt to myriad local variations, and can
be configured to reflect a community’s unique
needs and aspirations; histories, values and
priorities; and, its government’s capabilities
and capacity in service delivery.
The beginning CRM option is that of the
commodity solution, which provides an
answer to a specific pain point; followed by
the service solution that provides a platform
solution for responsive government; then an
insight solution through business intelligence
as a means to decision support and accountability.
The bookend of the continuum reaches
beyond public service to the most important
relationships in America’s civic life — the
citizen experience with their government by
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Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government
Four Approaches to
Citizen Relationship Management
creating a new public square for civic engage-
ment. Each place on the continuum is
explored and illustrated with examples of
where it has been made to work.
No one point on the continuum is superior
to the others – each adds value of its own
accord. And, to illustrate each place on the
continuum, where the more advanced
include the previous functionality, it is use-
ful to examine snapshots of exemplary
organizations.
Commodity: An Answer to a
Specific Pain Point
A commodity response involves answering a
specific pain point in government service
delivery of operations. For instance, the city of
Indianapolis, Ind., has built its CRM around a
database of 600 call types related to specific
pain points.
The Wisconsin Department of Retirement
Services, which serves members and retirees
from state and local government and other
public institutions, was falling behind in serving
its members, call volume was increasing, and
the agency simply could not answer the
phone promptly – or at all. CRM addressed
those pain points.
In a single biennium (comparing 1999-2000
with 2001-2002), the percentage of calls
answered rose dramatically from only 23 per-
cent to a full 93 percent even as the time
taken to connect with a live operator fell from
2.5 to 1.5 minutes. But the phone calls were
just the beginning. The department slashed
the time needed to fulfill requests from two
weeks to a single day. The CRM strategy
enabled them to manage e-mail effectively,
with response times falling from two to five
days to 24 hours.
Service: A Platform Solution for
Responsive Government
In late 2004, the Miami-Dade 3-1-1
Answer Center became the nation’s first CRM
8
implementation to handle calls for both a
county and city government – Miami -Dade
County, and the city of Miami, Fla. Project
leaders hope to extend the services' reach to
cover three-dozen municipalities over time –
all using a shared platform for responsive gov-
ernment.
Like many local government CRM
systems, Miami-Dade 3-1-1 is configured to
manage resident requests for business and
building permits, and act on their reports of
potholes, stray cats and abandoned cars. As
with other such services, the answer center is
more than just answers. Citizen service repre-
sentatives (CSRs) complete work orders and
dispatch non-emergency staff to respond to
citizen requests.
In Hampton, Va., a 3-1-1 contact center
was one of the key strategies identified by the
city’s Citizen Delight Task Force. Its name
embodied its mission — delighting citizens
during their next interaction with government.
Whether over the phone, on the Web or
face-to-face during Saturday hours at “City
Hall at the Mall,” the channels all supported a
one-to-one relationship between a citizen
and his or her city.
Hampton has made it real through
reorganization and reallocations, which
increased capacity within existing resources.
City officials hold themselves accountable for
their performance through “metrics of
citizen delight” – data, which is used to report
on results across departmental lines and pro-
vide oversight.
Employees who found the best and worst
case scenarios for completing a project helped
develop the metric. For example, it may take
four days to fix potholes. The
database shows that it takes five days to fix
potholes to allow for any issues that
may come up. The metrics in the database
help keep the employees accountable in their
respective departments because the
work order goes to the department with

the expected date of completion. The
employees and department head are
motivated to complete the project on that
specific date or sooner.
Metrics also have a huge impact on the cus-
tomer, psychologically. It improves the cus-
tomer experience when they’re told it’s going
to happen on a specific date and it’s going to
take a specific amount of time.
This knowledge management database
is the same database on the city’s Web site, so
customers can call in or go to the Web
database and search on the knowledge
management database.
Intelligence: Insight, Decision
Support and Accountability
In processing transactions that help manage
relationships, CRM systems create huge vol-
umes of information, which can be refined
into business intelligence – data that indicates
what the jurisdiction did, how it did it, and
how much it cost.
Knowing the cost and timeliness of deliver-
ing a unit of service is the mother’s milk of
decision support in planning and budgeting. It
also goes to the heart of accountability for
decisions, for actions, for quality.
Chattanooga, Tenn., ramped up a CRM-
driven 3-1-1 system and, like Baltimore and
Chicago before it, got better, faster and
smarter for doing it. The program and the
system that supports it under the banner of
“One Call to City Hall” went live in February
2003. The contact center has averaged
10,000 calls a month, with some 15 percent
of calls coming in after normal business hours.
Significantly, fully half the calls generated a
service request, which can be tracked
through CRM on metrics needed for planning
and tracking. Chattanooga is using CRM to fig-
ure out what counts, count it and hold people
accountable for results.
Hampton, Va., has also shown great results.
The city receives about 700 calls per day and
A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
contact center surveys show that callers are
“satisfied” to “extremely satisfied.” “With a
population of about 145,000, we are very
pleased with our call volume.” says John
Eagel, director of Information Technology in “With a population of
Hampton. In addition, the number of calls is
steadily increasing, along with the after-hours about 145,000, we are
calls, which are two indicators that any CRM
3-1-1 program is successful.” very pleased with our call
Experience: The New Public volume. In addition, the
Square for Civic Engagement
Data is a huge part of CRM and it has a pos- number of calls is steadily
itive correlation with the softer side of rela-
tionships, including when (and how) city offi- increasing, along with the
cials get in the same room as citizens to dis-
cuss matters of common concern. after-hours calls, which are
Tucson, Ariz., has been experimenting with
CRM as the coordination hub for managing two indicators that any
the citizen experience with its government.
Tucson made a deliberate decision to open up CRM 3-1-1 program is
every channel it had to encourage civic
engagement on issues important to the city’s successful.”
future. Tucson’s new public square included
e-mail, discussion threads and questions to – John Eagle, director of Information
the contact center. The CRM system was Technology, Hampton, Va.
used to identify topics for a show, called “12
Answers,” the city produced on its civic cable
TV channel. Feedback from the show was
routed back through the other channels in an
interactive process.
The civic engagement was not confined to
mediate communication. The multi-channel,
multi-threaded discussions helped put neigh-
bors with neighbors, culminating in a city
council meeting that was held in the conven-
tion center to accommodate the thousand or
so citizen participants. The feedback from that
meeting: citizens believed that they had been
heard – in person and online.
9
Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government
Planning, Implementing and Evolving
CRM and 3-1-1
A
ll of the CRM projects just described
relied on a vision and methodology
that took a phased approached to
implementation. Projects like these help
leaders understand what drives jurisdictions
to incorporate CRM strategies and helps
them evaluate whether it’s the right time to
introduce the technology. In addition, seeing
how other jurisdictions have incorporated
CRM through the different continuums —
ranging from the commodity to the experi-
ence options — provides a unique perspec-
tive on the choices available.
The phases of implementation and areas
of focus include: Getting Started, where
agencies conduct needs analysis, and if they
choose to move forward, craft a vision that
focuses on customer value. The second
phase, Mobilization, is where agencies cre-
ate teams and a communication plan, and
define and manage the scope. The third
phase is the implementation phase where
the contact center is created and the
CRM software is integrated into the
processes. And the final phase sets the stage
for maintenance, support and performance
measurement.
GETTING STARTED
The first phase, Getting Started, is the
needs analysis/feasibility study phase. Each
jurisdiction needs to go through its own
evaluation of whether the timing is right to
introduce CRM. Through needs analysis,
agencies define the strategy for customer
value, including both the value delivered to
customers and benefits expected in return. If
agencies decide to move forward, the next
step is to establish an approach incorporating
appropriate metrics to guide the journey all
the while focusing on the customer. One of
the metrics should include measuring the
emotional side of relationships with respect
to the CRM. Align the organization with the
visions and objectives of the CRM strategy.
People must be motivated to do the right
jobs to serve customers. For example, local
governments should clearly and succinctly
communicate the purpose in ways that
reflect the priorities of both internal stake-
holders (operations, policy and political) and
external constituents (citizens, business
owners and community activists), remem-
bering that people internalize vision before
need.
• Communicate to build critical mass and
to continuously stay ahead of informal
communications (rumor), particularly during
quiet or tough times.
Creating the Vision
During this phase, agencies define and
negotiate a shared understanding of the
problems to be solved and the opportunities
to be realized. It’s important to cast objec-
tives around greater capacity, and quality of
service delivery and themes which resonate
well with elected officials and residents alike.
Purpose may extend to cost savings, opera-
tional efficiencies through automation, deci-
sion support, public accountability, and eco-
nomic development or competitiveness.
Also, agencies should avoid the common
error of offering CRM as a technology solu-
tion to an ill-defined problem or opportunity
SUPPORT
NEXUS
CAPACITY
10
— or to talk about the technological means
before the business and policy ends.
Agencies are working cooperatively, yet
independently, to realize the vision of digital
government. No agency can successfully
deliver digital government services alone.
Mutual, interdependent development of a
shared citizen interaction hub is necessary
for citizens to experience online services
through “one government.”
In addition, agencies must earn the execu-
tive sponsorship of the city manager, mayor,
county executive, or similar top-level sup-
porters to be the champion. This champion
needs to evangelize the idea, galvanize the
participants around the purpose, and spend
personal and political capital as needed to
keep sometimes competing interests aligned
— especially as compromises need to be
made to realize the shared vision.
Hampton, Va., CRM implementation was
an excellent example of a project being
successfully championed. Assistant City
Manager Mary Bunting visited all of the
departments to get them enthusiastic about
the project by staying on message that it was
going to happen. “The employee was really
VALUE
PROPOSITION
Figure 2: The Nexus of Success
 A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

CHATTANOOGA, TENN., 3-1-1 TIMELINE

trying to get buy-in from the departments so February 2002 • Mayor approaching first year in office
that they would accept it,” says Eagle, who
strongly believes you have to have someone • Due diligence (site visits and other research) by the IS depart-
at the top to champion your project. ment in consultation with mayor’s staff hone process and plan

Understanding Public-Sector • Issue RFP for “One Call” center, including hardware,
Authorizing Environments software and consulting services
Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of
• Recruit for newly created position of performance audit manager
Government identified the three primary
and interrelated aspects of a public-sector
authorizing environment: value, support and May 2002 • Mayor uses State of the City Address to unveil Chattanooga
capacity (see figure two, p.10). On its face, 3-1-1 as a priority
public CRM is strong in all three areas:
• The value proposition for the citizen is
clear in terms of more ready access to more July 2002 • City names its first-ever director of the office of performance
responsive service delivery. review, with a first priority mandate get Chattanooga 3-1-1 up
• Political support for public CRM tends to and running
be strong and often intuitive because of the
compelling case for it based on the impact
on citizen service, internal efficiencies and • Contract competitive awarded to Motorola for build-out of
August 2002
accountability. Chattanooga3-1-1
• Capacity is at the heart of public CRM,
which extends the value of existing produc-
tion systems and adds a layer of coordination
September - • Build knowledge base of questions and responses, based on
and statistical tracking of service delivery. “best practices” for each type of service request
December
The nexus of the triad in Figure 2 (page
2002
10) is where the value proposition holds, the • Configure Motorola CSR system around Chattanooga rules,
support is in place and the capacity is avail- departmental processes and best practices
able. This is the place where success is most
assured. Case studies from Harvard confirm • Recruit customer service representatives, a new breed of
that failure occurs when an activity or initia- public servants, to staff the 3-1-1 contact center
tive operates outside of this area.

Evaluating the January 2003 • Customer service representatives on board and being trained
Approach Strategy
It follows then that the proximity to the
nexus influences the build-out of any CRM February 2003 • Gradual switchover and phase-in process, agency-by-agency,
system. In jurisdictions where there is strong into integrated “One Call” center
alignment, it is possible to pursue a strategic
architecture-oriented approach, while oth- • Formal launch of Chattanooga 3-1-1
ers (particularly those with strong support,
but insufficient capacity) have frequently • Media (news, public service and paid advertising) awareness
taken a mandate-oriented approach. of new service begins
Alignment takes time. Planning and imple-
menting CRM and 3-1-1 services varies
October 2003 • City launches ChattanoogaResults, with monthly reports on
significantly for cities and counties across the
tracking data for most major departments and quarterly
country. Chicago, Ill., Orange County, Calif.,
reports for other publicly funded agencies
and Miami-Dade, Fla., took two, three and

11
Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government
The architectural choices
grew out of the city’s
strategy to use technology
as a way to codify work
processes and establish
best practices around each
of them as a first step
toward CRM.
five years respectively to reorient themselves
around CRM. For their part, Dallas, Texas and
Chattanooga, Tenn., took only six months to
implement, although each benefited from
groundwork such as strategic planning, busi-
ness process documentation and in some
cases, a procurement process that can easily
consume an additional year or more.
Although time to launch is a reflection of
organization readiness, it also reflects the
underlying approach, which included two
broad areas: an architecture-oriented approach
and a mandate-oriented approach. The first
focuses on building capacity initially, while the
latter reflects the political realities of executive
sponsors wanting change immediately. Both
approaches achieve equilibrium sooner or
later, but take different routes to the nexus.
Kansas City, Mo., is exemplary
of the architecture-oriented approach and
Chattanooga launched under a mandate-
oriented approach. Each is discussed in turn.
Architecture-Oriented Approach
Kansas City enjoyed significant growth in
recent years. The population now approach-
es a half-million people, the economy has
expanded, and civic spaces now include a
new sports arena and entertainment district.
The growth has added scope and complexity
to the city manager’s Action Center, created
in 1974 as a one-stop shop for accessing gov-
ernment services. Over time, new
organizational silos developed around new
service offerings, resulting in a city hall with 15
entry points.
The mayor’s Service First Initiative set
out to refresh service delivery channels while
improving the ability of the mayor,
council and department directors to know
how much basic services cost for purposes of
planning, budgeting and accounting.
CRM and 3-1-1 is central to “Service First”
in improving service delivery, consolidating
entry points, monitoring performance, sup-
porting cross-jurisdictional collaboration (with
12
Jackson County among others), and enabling
economic development by expediting permit-
ting and planning.
Under the joint executive sponsorship of
the mayor and the head of the Action Center,
Kansas City took a deliberate, architectural
approach to building a robust infrastructure
that will serve as a new platform for service
delivery and managing internal operations.
The city is taking care of modernizing its back
office first as preparation for 3-1-1, and taking
the time to get an Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) suite in place before tackling
CRM. ERP systems consist of software pro-
grams that tie together all of an enterprise’s
various functions such as finance, manufacturing,
sales, and human resources. The software
also provides for the analysis of the data to
plan and forecast. The architecture-oriented
approach is possible in a locality with a strong
city manager form of government where
improvements can take place over time.
The architectural choices grew out of the
city’s strategy to use technology as a way to
codify work processes and establish best
practices around each of them as a first step
toward CRM (which will replace an existing
request tracking system that is unable to scale
to meet the city’s current needs).
Kansas City’s CRM will ride on top of ERP
– interfacing customer service to human
resources to track the number of hours of
staff time taken in responding to service
requests; to procurement to track the cost of
supplies in delivering a unit of service; to GIS
to identify geographic patterns in service
delivery; and to performance management
and financial modules of ERP to help
with budgeting and planning for future
service delivery. The city has already seen
growth in revenue collection with the
back-office reforms.
The CRM service also will ride on top of
expanded communications infrastructures
that leverage an existing large private branch
exchange, voice services that is being expand-

ed by adding automated call distribution for
handling increasing call volumes, and wireless
technologies to support handheld devices
that keep field workers in the field and out
of the office.
Mandate-Oriented Approach
Chattanooga is a case study in the power of
commander’s intent. The city’s director of
finance and performance, David Eichenthal,
remembers the moment the mandate for fast
tracking Chattanooga 3-1-1, the city’s 3-1-1
system, was set in stone on his first day on the
job. The mayor told talk radio the day before
Eichenthal’s first day that it would take six
months to implement Chattanooga 3-1-1. So
when a local reporter asked Eichenthal how
long it would take, he said, “Well, I guess
about six months.” Eichenthal said that he’d
been in government long enough to know
that when the mayor says six months, it’s
six months.
Eichenthal and Mark Keil, the city’s CIO and
chief steward of Chattanooga 3-1-1, have no
argument with an architectural approach to
implementing CRM. In fact, they are confident
they will end up there – but in reverse order
to the experience in Kansas City.
By way of background, Chattanooga’s
population of 155,000 people makes it
Tennessee’s fourth largest city. It has a strong
government, with a popularly-elected mayor
and a nine-member city council.
The story of 3-1-1 in Chattanooga begins in
2000, with the election of Mayor Bob Corker,
who had campaigned door-to-door exten-
sively. After knocking on about 9,000 doors,
he became convinced of two primary prob-
lems in the relationship between citizens and
their government.
The first was citizen access to government.
Residents had told him over and over again
that Chattanooga city government was
difficult to reach and deal with even though, as
city governments go, it was really not that big.
Even in a mid-sized city, people did not
A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
know where to go to resolve problems,
never mind one place to contact to resolve all
problems. At issue was what Eichenthal calls Mayor Corker cut his teeth
“blue-pages roulette,” where residents were
faced with literally dozens of different phone in business and delighted
numbers for dozens of different city services
in the blue pages. in the notion of looking
The other problem that Mayor Corker
confronted when he came into office related continuously at the bottom
to accountability. Corker cut his teeth in busi-
ness and delighted in the notion of looking line of a profit-and-loss
continuously at the bottom line of a profit-
and-loss statement and knowing how well his
statement and knowing
business was performing. As mayor, he how well his business was
received monthly spending reports, but there
was little data about the city’s performance in performing.
terms of the quality and quantity of city serv-
ices. Eichenthal remembers, “There was real-
ly no useful information that could become
the focus of a dialog about departmental per-
formance.”
Early on, the mayor was interested
in, and embraced the ideas behind
Baltimore’s 3-1-1 programs and its award-
winning CitiStat system of performance
measurement, which was the catalyst for
Chattanooga 3-1-1 and Chattanooga Results,
which were shaped by four key decisions
made early in the planning process:
• Chattanooga 3-1-1 would not be in the
business of taking police or fire non-emergency
calls, consistent with the original intent for
3-1-1 services of focusing on civic services,
including the full range of public works,
parks and recreation, and other neighbor-
hood issues.
• Chattanooga 3-1-1 would be live, voice-
to-voice contact between citizens and their
government – no interactive voice response,
no menu of telephone prompts, and no
automated responses, for citizens trying to
connect with their city.
• A third party would build Chattanooga-
3-1-1. The city of Chattanooga made an early
decision to stay with its core strengths of pol-
icy making and direct service delivery. While
13
Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government
Getting senior manage-
ment on board is critical to
the project’s success. For
Chattanooga, it would
have been difficult to have
accomplished the CRM
project without strong
mayoral support and
leadership.
the city’s information services department
would play an important role in the planning
process, the city would leverage the core
competence of an outside contractor to
design, build and implement the 3-1-1 services.
• The distinguishing characteristic of
Chattanooga3-1-1 would be that the city was
the first to integrate 3-1-1 and performance
management. The decision shaped every-
thing from defining program objectives and
codifying best practices to integrating per-
formance metrics and choosing the hosting
environment. Chattanooga3-1-1 is housed in
the Office of Performance Review, not the
mayor’s office or the IS department.
MOBILIZATION PHASE
In the second phase, Mobilization, agencies
need to plan the work and work the plan. In
this phase, jurisdictions develop a compre-
hensive, malleable and widely available plan
for implementation. By definition, the imple-
mentation involves every operational unit of
the government and, in some cases, neighbor-
ing jurisdictions. This is the phase where agen-
cies create teams and a communication plan,
define and manage scope, and evaluate and
possibly revise business processes.
Creating Teams
This is the time to create the team, which
should include, at a minimum:
• Project champion
• Executive team/functional managers
(build bench strength)
• Project manager
• Consultant
• Technologist
Recruit executive-level policy makers,
including but not limited to department
directors from all involved public entities,
work through the purpose, scope and
implementation strategies at the outset, and
address issues that emerge during the build-
out and deployment.
For example, if your CRM project includes
14
the mayor’s citizens assistance office, the
municipal courts, solid waste, public works,
and parks and recreation, be sure to include
an executive-level department director from
each of those departments.
For Indianapolis, Ind., the CRM project
included the administrators of the divisions
and departments directly involved, including
the administrators of the Department of
Public Works, Animal Care and Control and
the Division of Compliance.
Getting senior management on board is
critical to the project’s success. For
Chattanooga, it would have been difficult to
have accomplished the CRM project without
strong mayoral support and leadership. The
project was in the mayor’s State of the City
speech. A separate new unit within the
mayor’s office was set up to make it happen.
During town hall meetings, the mayor kicked
off the sessions, emphasizing to employees
and citizens that he was behind the project. In
addition, Chattanooga administrators wanted
to know how they could do better. They saw
the CRM strategy as a chance to obtain better
information to better manage their departments.
Build the team carefully. A dedicated
project manager, with the trust and financial
backing of the champion and executive team,
leads a broader team of operational and
business staff from participating agencies to
reconcile existing processes with new ways of
working to realize a new model of integrated
service delivery through CRM. Bench
strength is a function of those operational and
business staff who are formally assigned
to working on this project, in contrast
to those whose participation relies on
“volunteer effort.”
A commitment to CRM involves formerly
discrete departments giving up autonomy
over people, budget and control for direct
service delivery. An intuitive resistance to such
changes can only be overcome with a
combination of a compelling vision for
improvements, department directors who

have a genuine interest in improvements, and
pan-agency leadership that makes such
improvement a sustained priority.
Have a guide by the side, which should
be a consultant. The magnitude of operational
change brought about through CRM is not
always apparent at the beginning of the jour-
ney. While the public-sector team and bench
are properly focused on realizing a particular
mission, they may have difficulty de-linking
those public missions from the paper-bound,
labor-intensive processes that have been used
to reach those objectives. A third party, by
virtue of having gone down this road before
with other clients, can provide expert
guidance in automating (and reengineering as
necessary) the processes through which the
public mission is realized.
Ensure technologists are involved from the
beginning, since technology is core to the suc-
cess of the CRM system. For Pat Holdsworth,
who ran the CRM project for Indianapolis,
Ind., technologists were key contributors to
his CRM team. The technologists came from
the GIS and Web services divisions in the
Information Services Administration.
Creating a Communication Plan
When creating the communication plan,
the communication needs to occur at the
beginning, during and after the CRM
implementation. The rumor mill is the most
efficient communication system in an
organization, so frequent communication
about change activities is a must to keep the
organization accurately informed. According
to Achilles Armenakis, the Pursell Ethics
professor at Auburn University College of
Business, all forms of communication need to
answer the question: “What’s in it for me?” in
order to ensure employees hear the messages.
Continued interaction between CRM oper-
ations and departments is crucial to respond
to and anticipate changing patterns of service
requests. In addition, triage service requests
to optimize available resources and keep
A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
service delivery channels aligned with changes
in business rules, policy or enabling legislation.
For Chattanooga, a combination of having
strong mayoral leadership, good administra- For Chattanooga, a combi-
tors willing to adapt to change, and communi-
cation made the project a success. If folks had nation of having strong
questions at any level, they answered those
questions honestly. They admitted there mayoral leadership, good
were going to be changes and they admitted
there were going to be problems, but were administrators willing to
going to work through them because the end
result was going to be better. adapt to change, and com-
Defining and Managing Scope munication made the proj-
The plan provides discipline in gathering
requirements from previously discrete busi- ect a success.
ness units, unearthing and defining dependen-
cies early, dividing the whole into digestible
phases, and marshalling and coordinating
resources to complete milestones on schedule.
Talk with those who will be served through
the new system. Good management of
citizen relationships assumes that citizens are
actively engaged in the design of the systems
that government will use as the new front line
of service delivery.
Early and broad consultations with the
public (broadly defined to include businesses
and community groups) can be instrumental in
honing the vision, gaining support and appro-
priately scoping the project. Successful jurisdic-
tions have listened to those they serve through
Town Hall meetings and other public conversa-
tions in preparing for CRM implementations.
Managing Scope Across
Jurisdictional Lines
Agencies may need to reach across
jurisdictional boundaries to use a CRM
initiative to create a single point of govern-
ment for citizens and businesses in a given
geographical area while solving problems for
more than one unit of government.
Success in such a multi-jurisdictional
collaboration requires peer networks among
the champions, project managers, teams, and
15
Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government
CRM implementations today
focus on data quality, not
the technology. Jurisdictions
should implement
project in the way that
works best for them, train
the staff for optimum
results and promote the
programs so citizens use it.
benches in the context of a joint planning and
implementation process. Success also demands
attention to sovereignty issues for the part-
nering jurisdictions to ensure they do not lose
control of the relationship with their residents
and the data used in serving them.
IMPLEMENTATION PHASE
the The third phase is where the CRM software
is integrated into business processes. At this
point, jurisdictions have completed their own
needs analysis, created teams and plans, and
reengineered business processes and work-
flows based on best practices. With over a
decade of practice in the private sector, CRM
implementations today focus on data quality,
not the technology. Jurisdictions should imple-
ment the project in the way that works best
for them, train the staff for optimum results,
and promote the programs so citizens use it.
Reengineering Business Processes
One of the most important steps to CRM
success is changing the business processes, if
needed. At implementation, CRM is a launch-
and-learn environment. Having reengineered
and automated processes prior to the “go-
live,” the first 30 to 90 days of operations
will open up new issues that will require fine-
tuning and re-automation.
Reengineering business processes means
“abandoning long-established procedures”
and looking with fresh eyes at the work
required to create a company’s product or
service and deliver value to the customer.
Some jurisdictions define step-by-step
procedures to complete each service they
provide. According to Michael Hammer and
James Champy in Reengineering the Corporation:
A Manifesto for Business Revolution,
HarperBusiness, 2001, it means asking this
question: “If I were re-creating this company
today, given what I know and with current
technology, what would it look like?”
Reengineering business processes also
means revising multiple processes – including
16
workload allocation – across previously
autonomous agencies or silos. It’s change
management. Managing change across agen-
cies needs to be done early in the CRM pro-
gram to enable operational, behavioral and
cultural transformation. Technology needs to
take a backseat to the business value it is
delivering. Finally, the team must develop
best practices for fulfilling the myriad service
request types. To that end, understand
departmental processes, policy and prac-
tices; reduce them to their functional equiv-
alents; and document, codify and automate
them in order to transcend separate depart-
mental operations with a common service
delivery platform.
Vendor applications provide best practices
to business processes; however, best prac-
tices should be used as a benchmark, not a
roadmap. By following the vendors’ best
practices, jurisdictions may save money
upfront because they avoid custom changes
to the application, and may save money down
the road by alleviating custom changes
required for upgrades.
The experience of successful implementa-
tions suggests that:
• Introducing a new model of service deliv-
ery is better than retrofitting the old model.
• A phased approach is more sustainable
than a big-bang implementation.
• An enterprise CRM strategy that covers
the full range of service requests has higher
public value than CRM solutions that are
limited to a single department.
The Contact Center
When putting together the CRM pro-
gram, executives should first look to cre-
ate one of the most important compo-
nents — the contact center. The contact
center is the central hub that can be phys-
ically located in one place or distributed
across multiple locations. It is the place
where 3-1-1 callers connect with the
agents and communicate information

through one of several channels of com-
munication, including telephone, e-mail or
Web-based services.
The front end of the contact center is the
communication component (phone, e-mail,
Web) where citizens and agents come
together and information is captured into
the system. In the middle is the contact cen-
ter software that manages all of those inter-
actions through call management software
that applies automatic call distribution, inte-
grated voice response or universal queuing.
Routing and queuing decisions are made
based on the communication channel
(voice, e-mail, Web) and the best skilled
agent available to handle the contact.
When the information arrives on the
agent’s desktop, the computer screen
shows information, such as the person’s
identity. Along the way, reporting is available
to track just how long the caller waited and
other statistics that are important to manag-
ing an effective contact center.
As executives decide how to build the
contact center, the first decision must
address whether there will be a single con-
tact center or multiple, distributed call cen-
ters. Decision-makers must be able to
determine where agents are being placed
and how location meets the needs of callers
and the agencies affected by the calls.
Efficiency is important and executives cannot
afford to overspend on too many call cen-
ters that may or may not be useful.
Next, decision-makers need to consider
the people factor, which is a very important
element to costs since 70 percent of the
costs are in the people (agents) and 20 per-
cent-plus is communication costs. Experts
suggest that an efficient contact center is fun-
damentally about how well people are used.
Does the center use a self-service model
applying the aforementioned call manage-
ment software? When calls are transferred,
are they transferred correctly before a
human comes on the line and has to do the
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
transfer? Is that the right person who can
help? Answers to all of these questions save
money.
The CRM software that sits on the agent’s
desktop should be an integrated database
that can manage all of these requests. It’s
where the agent types in information about
the customer, why he or she called in, etc.
Does the person need a call back? It’s the
application on the backend that is going to
help solve problems. People are brought in
for a particular type of service and then the
contact center provides a solution through
the aid of the software and tells the cus-
tomer the answer.
The contact center, call management soft-
ware, and the agents using the CRM soft-
ware are the elements that deliver the
3-1-1 solution, and therefore, should all be
taken into consideration before leaders
drill down into the specifics of the CRM
implementation.
Integrating the CRM Software
The CRM vendor will most likely lead the
integration step, but the integration should
only begin once the groundwork has been
completed. For example, the city of
Hampton divided the software into three
“engines,” which mirror the groundwork
that was completed first, before integrating
the software. The software divisions included:
• Workflow Engine – request processing;
• Knowledge Management – frequently
asked questions (over 3,000 questions and
answers reside in the database,); and
• Customer Database – Information on
citizens.
Indianapolis focused on three major areas
when it configured the CRM software:
• People: You must have the right people
in place for change management. Egos have
to be thrown out the window or you’re
doomed for failure. The administrators on
the CRM team evaluated their departments,
found the problems and fixed them. No one
17
A Strategic Guide with insight from
What’s important to note:
Jurisdictions have the choice
to change business processes
before integrating the soft-
ware or they can customize
the software to follow their
business processes.
pointed fingers. They all took an honest hard
look at the problems and figured out what
needed to be changed.
• Process: Fix both the physical (instead
of turning left, turn right) and business
processes (workflows). Change the process-
es so that technology can improve on it.
• Technology: Configure the CRM sys-
tem to work with the changed processes.
Important note: Jurisdictions have the
choice to change business processes before
integrating the software or they can cus-
tomize the software to follow their
business processes. Customizing software
comes with a price. Changing business
processes may mean that the workflow was
inefficient in the first place.
Training and Retraining Staff
After integrating the software, the goals
are to train the staff to provide citizen acces-
sibility. Change efforts by definition require
individuals to do their jobs differently.
Jurisdictions need to provide training on not
only how to perform the tasks the change
activity addresses, but also on what the new
acceptable behavioral patterns should be.
Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government
“The 2004 Hampton
Survey results just came
out and are posted on the
Web in the 'What’s Hot'
section. The city’s score
was in the 90s, which is a
really good score and an
increase from before.”
For example, is teamwork now a key com-
ponent of success? Is customer account
management a new skill required of the
employee? Learning customer service skills
should be a top priority. In fact, some CSRs
even learn key phrases in different
languages. Make sure the employee is provided
the opportunity to learn any new behavioral skills.
Another aspect of training includes training
the customer service employees to learn the
business processes along with the software.
Help the representatives understand how
the jurisdiction works. Let them go out into
the field to experience, first hand, how dif-
ferent areas operate. This helps to create
the team and to provide better service to
citizens. In addition, train the field employ-
ees on how customer service works, so that
both CSRs and field employees are helping
each other instead of pointing fingers.
Marketing to the Public
The 3-1-1 non-emergency phone num-
ber provides an excellent focal point for a
marketing campaign. It’s an easy number for
citizens to remember and it makes sense,
since it follows in the footsteps of the 9-1-1
emergency phone number. Marketing helps
brand the program in the minds of its citi-
zens and helps to promote the program,
which in turn increases the value of the pro-
gram to the city. The citizens need to know
about the CRM 3-1-1 program, so that they
realize the value the city has brought them.
Some agencies launched their programs
with billboards and radio advertisements.
Others used non-emergency vehicles as the
communication vehicle.
For example, Hampton, Va., promoted its
program in a variety of literature, on its Web
site (www.hampton.gov) in the “Contact
Us” section, on vehicles, and on billboards.
The city also distributed a press release and
wrote an article. To keep the marketing low-
key, the city did not do any media blitzes.
Chattanooga advertised the 3-1-1
programs, positioned the program in the
minds of the public as a city government
service. One of their most effective means
of advertising is displaying the 3-1-1 logo on
all city vehicles. The CSRs and the director
of performance receive letters of commen-
dation for the 3-1-1 staff who have gone out
to clear up a storm water problem, fill a pot-
hole, and solve other problems.
Indianapolis has had a contact center in
place for 12 years, but the software was
antiquated with no support available.
When the city implemented a new CRM
system to support the contact center, the
marketing campaign included a press
release on the newly installed CRM
system and a grassroots promotional
effort where city representatives attended
neighborhood associations and demon-
strated the CRM in action via its
Web-based interface.
MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT AND
EVALUATION PHASE
In this final phase, jurisdictions focus on
maintaining the systems and evaluating
18
whether benefits are being realized.
Maintenance falls under three categories:
providing the support in-house through the
IT team; paying for support from the CRM
vendor, or outsourcing the support to a
third-party vendor. Evaluation encompasses
customer satisfaction and performance
review – two key indicators that help deter-
mine whether the CRM initiative is successful
or not. One measurement is on the cus-
tomer side, the other measurement is on the
application side. Customer satisfaction is a
key factor in driving return on investment for
CRM. Meeting performance goals is another
metric. In addition, one final measurement
comes into play – accountability. How is the gov-
ernment, itself, operating? With reports provid-
ing factual data, CRM systems provide valuable
jurisdictional performance results, as well.
Hampton, Va., uses customer satisfac-
tion tools, including random phone
surveys when citizens call in and a formal
survey that measures satisfaction, which is
administered by an outside vendor. The
formal survey is conducted once a year in
the fall season. In addition, based on the
survey results, employees may receive
additional days off, such as the day after
Thanksgiving as a bonus. The higher the
rating, the more days off employees will
receive during the holiday season.
“It’s a real incentive to get those holidays
off,” says Eagle. “The 2004 Hampton Survey
results just came out and are posted on the
Web in the ‘What’s Hot’ section. The city’s
score was in the 90s, which is a really good
score and an increase from before.”
Providing Maintenance
and Support
Maintenance and support is straightfor-
ward with CRM. Whether jurisdictions sup-
port the CRM in-house, via the vendor or
outsource to a third-party vendor, the
reasons vary from cost to skills, and from
convenience to availability.

It’s really an individual jurisdictional choice
that needs to be evaluated upfront before
choosing and integrating the software. If the
decision is made at the end, the cost may be
astronomically high because the skill set is
high in demand or low in supply.
For Indianapolis, Ind., the manager of the
CRM project chose to outsource the mainte-
nance because the city was already outsourc-
ing most of its IT needs. In fact, not having to
use the CRM vendor for maintenance was a
factor in selecting the final CRM vendor. Since
the city was already paying for IT support, it
saw no reason to pay for additional support.
Evaluating Customer
Satisfaction Data
One of the best ways to see if CRM sys-
tems are working is to evaluate it from the
customers’ view. Did the problem get fixed
to their satisfaction? Do the citizens have
access to government? Customer satisfac-
tion surveys provide information to analyze
customer satisfaction with contact center
interaction and city services. Some of the
measurements include:
• Whether questions were answered to
the customers’ satisfaction;
• Whether their problems were resolved;
• How quickly their problems were
resolved; and,
• Quality of CSR’s interaction.
How managers obtain customer satisfac-
tion data is entirely unique for each case. For
Chattanooga, survey data was obtained by a
simple call back. The department calls peo-
ple back who have called 3-1-1. Those
quarterly customer surveys indicate a very
high level of satisfaction with how 3-1-1 staff
handles problems and the levels of courtesy.
Measuring Performance Goals
Another indicator of a successful CRM is
to analyze if the contact center is meeting
prior agreed-upon performance goals.
These goals need to be decided ahead of
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
time and then evaluated after implementing
the system. Measuring performance increas-
es performance. Some of the measure-
ments include:
• Response times for emergencies
• Answer times
• Hold time lengths
• Average talk times per call
• Abandon rates
• Length of time to pick up calls
• Call handling
• Number of calls taken over a period
• Number of calls CSRs answer
• Types of service calls/requests
• Total number of calls received
In measuring performance goals,
Chattanooga found that performance
review was a critical part of the project.
In October 2003, the city launched
Chattanooga Results, which provides
monthly reports on most of the major
departments and quarterly reports on other
departments and some city-funded entities.
For example, the regional transit agency
goes through Chattanooga Results as well –
and meets with the mayor and senior staff to
go over the results. The result of the exper-
iment in performance management has
shown increased satisfaction with city services.
Ensuring Accountability
Finally, CRM provides the opportunity to
see what’s getting done and what isn’t.
Another way to look at it is CRM allows
managers to make decisions based on facts
as opposed to intuition. For example, over-
time expenditures can be trimmed by
reporting back to the administrators how
much overtime is being accrued.
Indianapolis integrated a Master Address
Database into the CRM, which acts as an
address validation system. All agencies see
the same address and whether it exists or
not. Why is this important? It’s invaluable
because the city can show its citizens a GIS
map that graphically displays whether services
19
A Strategic Guide with insight from
are being completed or not. For example,
the CRM system can print out a map that
shows where garbage trucks missed picking
up garbage cans or where large amounts of
stray animals exist. It tracks complaints and it
really has changed the way administrators
deal with neighborhoods.
Baltimore, Md., became the first city to
implement a 3-1-1 contact center in
1996, followed by Chicago the next year.
The two early adopters were able to gain
insight into high-volume service requests,
such as garbage collection, road mainte-
nance, traffic sign/signal maintenance,
drainage/erosion problems, and aban-
doned vehicles.
Both cities used CRM 3-1-1 to figure out
what counts, count it, and hold people
accountable for the results. Experience has
taught them that performance measures
change over time and that “What doesn’t get
counted gets discounted.” The bottom line
count demonstrates savings and new
revenues attributed to CRM in Baltimore
totaling $13.2 million annually (in a general
fund budget of $1 billion).
Finally, data yields accountability because
performance is suddenly being monitored.
For example, the CRM and 3-1-1 system
makes it easy to trace the progress of serv-
ice requests, which shows how the respon-
sible departmental supervisors are satisfying
the service requests. In addition, the system
provides real-time reports showing trends,
bottlenecks, and response times for specific
types of requests. For example, managers
can receive reports by service type, depart-
ment or geographical area. The reports help
departmental management pinpoint out-
standing performance and target efficiency
needs. Before implementing CRM systems,
jurisdictions lacked data about how well
departments were performing.
Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
Successful 3-1-1 imple-
mentations have been
deliberate in their market-
ing and messaging, with a
comprehensive campaign
that placards everything
from public works vehicles
to letterhead with the
“One Call” message for
non-emergency services.
What makes the CRM initiative a success?
What makes it fail? The following critical suc-
cess factors should provide insight into how to
successfully implement CRM strategies.
Leadership: The continued active involve-
ment of the executive sponsor keeps the pol-
icy team and operations team focused, while
building in an escalation path for resolving dis-
putes and addressing surprise issues.
Original Research: There is no substitute
for seeing an operating installation that is deliv-
ering value day-by-day, hour-by-hour, in a
public entity of similar size and scale as the
prospect jurisdiction. The team needs to doc-
ument their existing operations as the “as-is”
model and the site visit as the “to-be” model,
being careful to understand the details
between the two.
Change Management: CRM forces the
reengineering of multiple processes — not
the least of which is workload allocation —
across previously autonomous agencies.
Bringing order and coordination to the com-
plexity of cross agency change needs to be
embedded early in the structure of the CRM
initiative for the greatest likelihood of opera-
tional, behavioral and cultural transformation.
Organizational Buy-In: Integrated service
delivery through CRM requires that multiple
agencies commit to long-term operational
change, the first test of which is to keep a full
suite of agencies engaged in the planning and
development process (particularly those that
are independent of the champion).
Departmental buy-in and continued commit-
ment is critical, as is continued interaction
between the contact center and departments.
Business Process Integration with IT:
CRM as a shared service delivery platform
that brings together previously discrete agen-
cies and their respective dissimilar business
processes, all of which need modernization
before automation.
20
Measurement and Metrics: The executive
team needs to identify what need gets meas-
ured based on policy and operational objec-
tives; the operational team needs to benchmark
those measures as done the old way; and the
system needs to track the metrics that matter.
Cross Training: Successful implementations
are attentive to immersing the new category
of customer service representatives into pub-
lic service by ensuring they are trained on
how the city or county works, including
ride-alongs with field employees. In building
effective teams, it is equally important to have
field employees exposed to the culture of
customer service so each has a working
knowledge of the way each other works.
Privacy, Security and Information Sharing:
In the risk-averse culture of the public sector,
successful jurisdictions have been vigilant in
developing privacy and security safeguards in
the new shared CRM environment such that
no more personally identifiable information is
collected or shared across agency lines than is
needed to provide the service effectively.
Follow the Call: CRM systems that support
“One Call to City Hall” create the expectation
of improved and expedited service delivery,
including more precise estimates of response
times and more effective follow through.
Service requests may be open for a relatively
short time, as is the case with missed garbage
pickup or pothole repair, or may require mul-
tiple, layered responses over time such as
recovering from natural disasters.
Marketing: As internal processes are trans-
formed through CRM, it is important to bring
the public along with government’s new way
of doing business. Successful 3-1-1 imple-
mentations have been deliberate in their mar-
keting and messaging, with a comprehensive
campaign that placards everything from public
works vehicles to letterhead with the “One
Call” message for non-emergency services.

LESSONS LEARNED
According to Gartner Research, imple-
menting a successful CRM initiative is a
challenge, but one that can be overcome with
strategic planning and innovative thinking. This
list of lessons learned from others who have
forged forward should help in circumventing
issues that are below the radar screen.
Joint Governance of CRM as a Shared
Application: No single agency can own what
is effectively a shared application – not IT,
finance, nor general services. CRM amd 3-1-1
contact centers change the citizen and
business experiences with government
because its agents are able to initiate work
orders that commit the resources of
formerly autonomous departments. Those
departments have a vested interest in the
governance of the new client relationship
layer and have a reasonable expectation to be
part of determining the policies and proce-
dures under which contact center operates.
Build it like a System: CRM and 3-1-1
contact centers have quickly become an
essential part of government service delivery.
Importantly, the common workflow
processes have replaced agency-specific
scheduling and tracking mechanisms,
becoming as essential to government opera-
tions as any mission-critical system with
attendant needs for business continuity and
disaster recovery.
Working through the Dynamic of
Collaborative Responses to Single Events:
CRM and its attendant processes need to be
designed to accommodate widely different
service requests. The nature, complexity and
time required to respond to a one-time
request to fix a pothole or tow an abandoned
car contrasts sharply with the multi-part,
multi-agency response during extended
recovery periods following natural disasters.
Truth in Status Tracking: Automating
incomplete processes can skew the statis-
tics on which programs such as CitiStat rely
upon. Large volumes of open tickets or
A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
service requests can be charted as a nega-
tive performance measure – even when
longer recovery times are appropriate for
complex, multi-phase responses. Conversely, Successful implementations
open tickets can be time out according to pre-
set parameters, with these closed tickets are attentive to immersing
being incorrectly coded as complete. In
designing reports from CRM systems, meas-
the new category of
ure what matters but remain careful to under- customer service repre-
stand the input before using them as the basis
of data-driven decisions. sentatives into public
Creating a CSR Career Path in Civil
Service: Modern customer service originated service by ensuring they
in the private sector and is unlikely to graft
successfully into the civil service absent delib- are trained on how the
erate steps to create a career path for CSRs
that make public service attractive to people city or county works,
who are well suited to act as an agent for
citizens in their dealing with government
including ride-alongs with
and who must know how government works field employees.
and understand the subtleties of customer care.
Take Positions, Not People in Staffing
Front Line: Contact centers may be best
staffed by candidates outside government
where, by definition, seasoned CSRs are
more likely to be found. Contact centers are
not well served by the perception of threat to
departments competing neither for their best
talent, nor as a potential dumping ground for
marginal employees. Both outcomes are
avoided by appropriating vacant positions (or
FTEs) to the contact center, not people.
If It is On the Web, It is in the Contact
Center: CSRs have any number of systems at
their disposal, including the information and
services intended for direct citizen access on
the Internet. For callers who may not have
immediate access to the Internet, CSRs can
act as their agents by using online services on
their behalf to respond to their needs. (Over
time, the adoption of Voice Extensible
Markup Language will make online services
available over the phone without live opera-
tor intervention.)
The 90-Day Redo: No matter how long or
21
Hello. The First Word in Reinvigorating the
Relationship Between Citizens and their Government
LESSONS LEARNED
comprehensive the planning process, con-
tact centers require a launch and learn
approach. The uncontrollable nature and
volume of calls tests every design assumption
and often requires recalibration of the system
based on the lessons learned from the early
days of operations. Success of the contact
center requires vigilance against anything that
echos this response, “It’s not my job.”
The 3-1-1 Exchange, Cell Providers and
State Regulators: Due diligence includes
soliciting clarity from state telecommunica-
tions regulators on 3-1-1 tariffs and winning
SUMMARY
Recent data from the Pew Internet and
American Life project, How Americans Get in
Touch with Government, May 24, 2004, sug-
gests a synergy between multi-channel CRM
and the practices and preferences of citizens.
Forty-two percent of respondents told Pew
that their last contact with government was
over the telephone and 29 percent said it
was through a Web site. Only 20 percent
reported that their last contact was in per-
son, with the remainder indicating contact
by e-mail (18 percent) and conventional mail
(17 percent).
The results affirm an orientation toward
multi-channel service delivery coordinated
through CRM, which can be scaled to
handle external requests from citizens and
businesses as well as growing volumes of
mission-critical traffic among agencies. They
are also at odds with a conventional model
of government service delivery, which is
predicated on the front counter.
(CONTINUED)
support of telecommunications providers
(including wireless and wireline players, plus
cable companies that operate telephony
services) to overcome resistance to pass
through surcharges and ensure the greatest
degree of interoperability possible among dis-
similar systems.
“No” or “Slow” can be the Right
Answer: CRM requires political, business
and operational commitments to changing
the way the work of government gets done.
No matter how great the need or how
compelling the prospects for CRM, lackluster
In comparing the historic experience with
9-1-1 and the current work on CRM-driven
3-1-1 contact centers, it is worth noting a
strikingly similar trajectory of the two (with
one notable exception).
It took 40 years for 9-1-1 to migrate from
the U.K. to the U.S.; 3-1-1 is approaching
critical mass in its first decade. And after only
six years in serving a growing list of commu-
nities, 3-1-1 has attracted interest from
across the Atlantic — this time from the U.S.
to the U.K.
Like 9-1-1, 3-1-1 has found fertile ground
in small- and medium-sized communities
such as Hampton and Chattanooga and, at
the same time, scaling effectively to meet the
demands of New York, Houston, Miami-
Dade, and Chicago.
The simplification of moving from the
frustration of “blue pages roulette” – such as
Chattanooga or Miami-Dade where,
“When county residents, visitors or busi-
22
commitment and poor organizational
alignment may require localities to defer
a decision on moving forward. Absent
improvements that would support the
mutually interdependent demands of CRM,
the right choice may well be to decide against
implementation at all.
nesses need service from the county gov-
ernment, they wandered through a maze of
over 1,600 seven- or 10-digit numbers.” –
to a single three-digit number for non-emer-
gency requests has realized the same
efficiencies in handling requests and coordi-
nated responses as was the case with 9-1-1.
As with the growth of 9-1-1, the maturity
of CRM technologies and related practices
are helping to address outstanding issues with
state regulators and mobile phone providers.
Nine-one-one was a creature of the
rotary phone, but has only expanded in its
importance as the point of contact between
citizens and emergency responders. CRM
was born as a creature of sales organizations,
limited only by a name that did not anticipate
CRM’s appropriation by government.
In communities across the country, public
CRM is reconciling organizations with proud
traditions, and important public missions
with a nimble, networked tomorrow. D
 A Strategic Guide with insight from
THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

Participants and Contributors

PUBLIC SECTOR PARTICIPANTS
John Eagle, Director of Information
Technology, Hampton, Va.
David Eichenthal, City Finance Officer,
Chattanooga, Tenn.
Pat Holdsworth, Mayor’s Action Center,
Indianapolis, Id.
Gail Roper, Chief Information Officer,
Kansas City, Mo.
Steve Tallen, Information Technology
Director, Topeka, Kan.
Mary Fuentes, Miami-Dade County, Fla.
Bob Hanson, General Manager, Information
Technology, Sarasota County, Fla.
Lee Hoffman, Operations Improvement
Division, Tampa, Fla.
Larry Knafo, Deputy Commissioner,
Department of Information Technology and
Telecommunications, New York, N.Y.
Cathy Maras O’Leary, Chief Information
Officer, Cook County, Ill.
Rod Massey, Chief Information Officer,
Clark County, Nev.
Chris O’Brien, Business and Information
Services, Chicago, Ill.
Suzanne Peck, Chief Technology Officer,
Washington, DC
Elliot Schlanger, Chief Technology Officer,
Baltimore, Md.
Rick Smith, Director, Strategic Planning and
Technology, Tampa, Fla.
David Sullivan, Chief Information Officer,
Virginia Beach, Va.
PRIVATE SECTOR PARTICIPANTS

PUBLIC SECTOR CONTRIBUTORS
Paul Alexander, Director, Information
Technology, Pinellas County, Fla.
Michael Armstrong, CIO,
Des Moines, Iowa
Jerry Bailey, Chief Technology Officer,
Fort Wayne, Id.
Gloria Bingham, 3-1-1 Director,
Houston, Texas
Dave Molchany, CIO, Fairfax County Va.
Gary Moeller, Director, Information
Technology, San Antonio, Texas
Elizabeth Mounts, Director of Information
Technology, Richmond, Va.
Stuart Murchison, Interim Director,
Communications and Information Services,
Dallas, Texas
Dianah Neff, CIO, City of Philadelphia, PA
Tim Benoit, Alliance Manager, Public
Sector, SLE, Avaya, Inc.
Dave Ensor, Vice President, Public Sector
Solution Architecture, Avaya, Inc.
Scott Imhoff, Marketing and Portfolio
Manager, Public Service Solutions,
Motorola, Inc.
Steve Reed, Vice President and General
Manager, Public Service Solutions,
Motorola, Inc.

FROM THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

Cathilea Robinett, Executive Director Caroline Drakeley, Writer

Dr. Paul W. Taylor, Chief Strategy Officer Erica Hall, Director of Operations
Marina Leight, Vice President, Education Rhonda Wilson, Communications Director
Michelle Gamble-Risley, Executive Editor

23
 UNDERWRITTEN BY
About Avaya
Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications
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on businesses large to small, Avaya is a world leader in
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Driving the convergence of voice and data communications
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results. For more information visit the Avaya website:
http://www.avaya.com.
A STRATEGIC GUIDE FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
Local governments, whether large or small — in a city, town
or county — need to be responsive to citizens to make
their community a great place to live. And they need to be
efficient in the way they provide services to their community.
Motorola is at the forefront of providing customer request
management and asset management solutions to local gov-
ernment, and brings a vast set of experiences and best prac-
tices to bear on your communities CRM and 3-1-1 initiatives.
Using Motorola's Customer Service Request (CSR) system,
communities are able to enhance the delivery of services to
its constituents, while improving the operational efficiencies
of its departments and agencies, and ensuring accountability
across the enterprise -- resulting in both satisfied citizens and
a positive return on their investment.
Developed exclusively for local government application, CSR
manages the full lifecycle of citizens' requests from service:
from intake of the request using automated scripts to ensure
the appropriate information is accurately captured; through
resolution where requests can be managed at the task level;
to reporting and insight to the community's leadership and
management teams.